(Just FYI to everyone, my previous post was in response to Jean's
comment.)

TxGal:

I don't think repeated cheating shows remorse, so I don't think you did
anything wrong. You were betrayed, and I don't think you should
probably have forgiven him. (I don't blindly forgive people if they
haven't earned it.) But, if you are on good terms with him and you've
both moved past it, it probably worked to for the best. I just hate to
see anyone break up if there's something worth salvaging.

And infidelity is often a way out for people — a clear indication that
the relationship is failing. In those cases, there probably isn't
anything left to rebuild. That may have been the case for you, and if
so I'm sorry.

I'm certainly not passing judgement here. If a relationship ended due
to infidelity, I can't comment on your situation. I'm just offering my
perspective about how often I've seen people make mistakes (not just
sexual infidelity, mind you), and how working through those problems can
lead to a good (sometimes stronger) relationship.

Nope, I'm drawing a distinction with justifying behavior and keeping the
door open for forgiveness. If my partner cheats on me (not a lot of
times, which would clearly show no indication of remorse on her part,
but up to a few times), I'm not going to assume she's an evil person and
hate her forever. Further, I probably have to share in some of the
blame if I haven't been availble to her in the ways I should be (not
just sexually). Over half of all men cheat or have cheated (I'm not one
of them), and nearly half of women cheat or have cheated. If we don't
allow for remorse and forgiveness, we are saying that half of the people
walking around are just evil people. I believe that there are a few
very bad people, and a lot of people who have fallen during a moment of
weakness. I would never tell other people they _must_ forgive an
infidelity, but if we don't leave the door open for that forgiveness, we
may find ourselves turning our backs on a relationship very much worth
salvaging. Relationships are difficult, and we (in contemporary
society) tend to give up on them when things don't go just right. Had
my my uncles and aunts given up on their marriages because of an
occasional infidelity, most of them wouldn't be together today. But as
it is, they worked through it and most have loving, trusting
relationships with each other again. We live in a very lonely time
(statistically, according to many studies and collective psycological
data), so I'd say we as a society are doing something wrong. I merely
think this may be one of those areas that needs extra care, rather than
to be dismissed too quickly.

I agree that cheating is unjustifiable, but I've seen very little in
this topic about forgiveness. I'm not a cheater and I doubt I ever will
be, but let's flip it around. If I'm dating a woman and we've been
together long enough that it's understood that we are committed to each
other, but for some reason she strays, to merely say "there's no excuse"
leaves very little margin for remorse and forgiveness. People aren't
perfect and, in general, it's the imperfections about people that we
really love. It's the imperfections that make us unique.

I would probably forgive any cheating, even repeatedly, if I were
convinced she truly had weak moments that led to infidelity. Why?
Because chances are, if she doesn't want to leave me, she also doesn't
intend to hurt me. Also, if she's cheating, I need to look at myself
and figure out what she craves that I'm not giving her. Am I distant?
emotionally unavailable? insensitive as a lover? Infidelity doesn't
"just happen" and is rarely one person's fault. (That said, I know a
lot of real jerks who don't care for their partners at all and cheat all
the while. Those relationships have much deeper problems than sexual
infidelity, however.)

As an aside, celibacy (even with masturbation) doesn't work for
everyone. Some people crave the touch of a lover so strongly that a
year apart would be absolute torture. I'm thinking specifically of
military spouses (or significant others) who, alone for a year or
longer, turn to someone else for physical and emotional comfort. It
doesn't mean they don't love their spouses or that they want a long-term
relationship with anyone else, but these interludes provide them with
something important they are missing. And, sometimes, the other spouse
gives his or her approval. (Granted, that isn't really cheating if you
have your spouse's approval — there's no betrayal of trust in that
case.)

My point is, everyone has flaws and everyone makes mistakes. If there
is true remorse and a genuine effort to rebuild the trust that has been
damaged, I think everyone is entitled to forgiveness.

Just my two cents worth...

appropriate responses for a couple of blue balls

WTF?

This one's empty, but this one's still full.

I wear my sunglasses at night...

*looks up* F---in' poser!

You little freak...

These friggin' flourescent lights flickering are really making me
angry!

My face! My face!

This post is too dang boring!

Personality is so important. I have a good friend who, at first glance,
would look rather plain. After getting to know her, though, I've found
her to be one of the most attractive women I know. Kind, caring,
intelligent, funny, etc., are traits that I find endearing, and they
color how physically attractive I find someone. By the same token, a
woman with stunning features will be unappealing to me if she's rude,
self-absorbed, immature, or kicks puppies for fun.

I am careful in choosing words in my posts, because I want to be
correctly understood. I don't think it has much to do with how much
people like me or what they think of my character; if I were that
self-conscious, I would never write anything disagreeable.

However, I cannot control the final interpretation of my words.
Language is fickle like that: it always requires an interpreter (i.e.,
the mind). So, I try to be as clear as possible, but someone with a
vastly different way of looking at the world may not interpret what I
write as what I mean. Bummer!

Humor is the most difficult thing to get across in writing, because the
written word lacks the subtleties of voice inflection, facial
expression, and body language. The emoticons help a bit, but take so
much of the richness of language away. Therefore, I use them sparingly.

Hi Kevin.

I hope your new web host proves out.

I don't have any great tales to tell of web hosts, but I can pass along
two with whom I was far less than pleased:

1) rackspace — they claimed 99.99% uptime, but we were down almost every
month, so our system admin switched... apparently the uptime percentage
didn't take our dedicated server into account

2) hosting.com — this goes back several years now, but they were wholy
unreliable, then started billing us (and we didn't have the contract
with them, our system admin did)... it was a horrible fiasco and the
errant billings kept coming for months until we were able to straighten
it all out

Good luck with your new host.

I think the problem with PHP5 has been not the release itself, but the
guides that were hastily written in its wake (and for all the positive
press the O'Reilly books get, I've found them to be hit-and-miss at
best). I've used PHP5 for a couple of years now and find it to be
stable and feature-rich, containing all the functionality of PHP4 and
then some.

The approach to OOP has been much more complete in v.5 than in v.4. For
almost every script I write, I prefer procedural programming for web
site scripting — but there have been some tasks where the use of objects
has been a real time-saver. PHP4 had OOP support, but it was heavily
criticized as being pseudo-OOP or too lightweight.

If you need to do much XML parsing, PHP5 has a nice set of library
functions that make quick work of it. I don't have to do much work in
XML, but the addition of SimpleXML is useful when a job calls for it.

I haven't had the chance to use the embedded SQLite yet, but I'm looking
forward to using it for some small projects that don't require the power
(or the overhead) of MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MS SQL Server.

For the most part, what you learn for PHP5 will be applicable to PHP4 —
so I wouldn't be too concerned about wasting your time, especially
getting started with the basics.

I agree with Kevin that—if you haven't already—you should learn HTML,
CSS, and some JavaScript. I try to avoid using much JavaScript
(although it's usually not possible to go 100% JavaScript-free) because
there are so many browser dependencies. If I can accomplish the same
task using PHP without significant loss of functionality or usability, I
try to do it in PHP exclusively. With the rise in popularity of Ajax,
you can perform many complex tasks that otherwise would have relied
solely on JavaScript (but be careful of using Ajax, as there have been
reports of vulnerabilities that allow browser hijacking). Even so,
having a handle on Javascript basics is extremely helpful.

Allowing .htm and .html extensions for PHP scripts is a matter of
personal taste. For me, I don't mind either way. It won't be any more
secure changing the directive to include .html or .htm extensions, but
some may find it to have an aesthetic appeal. You can use the .htaccess
file as Kevin suggested, or you can change the server's PHP directives
to include .html, .htm, and any other extension you'd like to include.

I agree with Kevin on using phpMyAdmin — very nice interface and
provides for 95% of the most common DBA tasks you'll need (at least to
start).

The book I used to get started (several years ago) with PHP / MySQL is
"PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson. The
book is currently in its 4th edition, covering PHP5 and MySQL 5. I
found the book to be a very good and thorough introduction, without
talking down to the reader (as is often the case with the "Dummies"
books, which I find to be a bit too cursory to be very helpful).

Additionally, I've found the following site to be invaluable to me as a
reference:

http://www.phpfreaks.com/

Good luck delving into PHP/MySQL. I'm sure you'll love it after you get
some of the basics mastered.

Cat: How did you eventually figure out "he" was really a "she?" Did she
finally come clean? Either way, stalkers are scary! They don't know
what they even hope to achieve by stalking or harassing someone, and
that lack of forethought makes them dangerous. I don't think we take
stalking as seriously as we should.

I've never been stalked or seriously harassed (although when I was in
high school I received a series of calls from a raspy-voiced man asking
me to take a survey about exercise and fitness and how being in good
shape made me feel, e.g. more confident with women, etc.). If I were
really being stalked, however, you'd better believe my house would be
wired up with a full security system and a lethal version of "Home
Alone"-style traps.